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Tag Archive: Elizabeth E. Wein

Last night I HAD to go in and Tweet my new favourite author Elizabeth Wein about something I had just read in her new book Rose Under Fire, which was released on June 3rd 2013.

AND SHE REPLIED!!!

How amazing is it that you can interact with the author of a book WHILE YOU ARE READING IT??? And what a lovely lady she is too.

I must just say WHY she has become my new favourite author, and it all started when I was reading THIS post by the awesome Chuck Wendig (who I have mentioned once or twice here before…ahem…) about Young Adult fiction. He talks about ‘Riskier Stories’:

Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It’s stuff that doesn’t fly by tropes or adhere to rules — appropriate, perhaps, since young adults tend to flick cigarettes in the eyes of the rules and don’t play by social norms as much as adults do. (Though teens certainly have their own social codes, too.) I wish adult fiction so frequently took risks on the material at hand, but it doesn’t. And as a person (relatively) new to the young adult spectrum, I used to assume it was all Twilight: generic pap. But then you read John Green, or Libba Bray, or Maureen Johnson — or holy shit, have you read Code Name: Verity?! — and your eyes start to go all boggly. Amazing storytelling in this realm. Amazing! I’ll wait here while you go read it all. *stares*

So I went to find Code Name Verity. AND WOW…just WOW, can that lady write. Her story is gripping, her characters compelling, I was totally knocked off my feet and blown away.

The tale is about two young women in World War II who become best friends, and who inadvertently end up flying over German occupied France together. Their plane is shot down, and the passenger parachutes out, only to be caught by the Gestapo and tortured for information about the British war effort. She tells it through the story of her friendship with her pilot.

Its a heart-rending tale and should be read with a box of tissues close to hand. What I loved best about it was the depiction of love and friendship between two people; how another person can mean the world to you and carry you through the very best and worst of times.

I have now purchased Rose Under Fire, and am a few chapters in, but I will review it here when I am done.

Back to Twitter. I was SO excited to be able to have a conversation with the author of the book I was reading, so humbled that she replied straight away, that I have made myself the promise I will endeavor to do the same should I ever get my book finished and published, and have fans who follow me on twitter.